Blue Ridge Center And Uptown JazzFest

North Carolina is home to one of the most visited sites in America and it happens to be a road. The Blue Ridge Parkway holds some of the most beautiful vistas, historic sites and cultural treasures in our state and the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation is dedicated to preserving this iconic scenic highway. We'll visit with folks from the foundation and then we jazz things up a bit. Four years ago the uptown Jazz Fest was born and it's a hit. We'll talk to organizers to find out what to expect from this year's festival. Music and mountains when Charlotte Talks.

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Part One: Old Salem. Just as our country was being forged in the halls of the Continental Congress and birthed in the Revolutionary war, a group of hardy Moravian immigrants was building a settlement in the Piedmont of North Carolina. The town of Salem sprang up and still remains just outside of Winston-Salem. Today it is a living museum, a window into some of the earliest founders of our state. Well visit with the President of Old Salem Inc., a company devoted to the settlement and to educating North Carolinians and other visitors on life in colonial North Carolina. Follow us back in time when Charlotte Talks.

The sounds of a city aren't just fire trucks and car horns. The real sounds of a city can be found in the music venues around town and at the concerts that local bands participate in. These are local musicians and local stories - all told through the crooning and tuning of their music. But in such an up-and-coming town as Charlotte, do the bands really make it big? Is there undiscovered, hidden talent in the Queen City? Well, yes there is. For instance James Brown sings for the native band Matrimony, which was recently signed to Columbia records. That sounds promising. And Charlotte’s music scene continues to mature with heightened access to artists and the revival of a young, hip arts scene. A conversation about local music, when Charlotte Talks.

Before Nashville became the country music capital of the country, Charlotte was a major center for early country and blues artists to record. Record companies looking for new sounds outside the big cities of the north came to Charlotte several times between the late '20s and '40s in search of “hillbilly” and “race” music as it was called back then.

The Neighborhood Theatre in Charlotte’s NoDa area has seen lots of changes over its 60 year history. It was originally the Astor movie house, part of a bustling community built around the mills north of uptown. After those mills shut down in the 70s, the theater declined along with the neighborhood around it and was showing X-rated films. The building got a renovation in the 90s and opened as a music venue under the Neighborhood Theatre name. Saturday night, it re-opens after two months of renovations.